Preview: 'Blur'

Where do you go after creating Project Gotham Racing? It was a series that prided itself on authentic city recreations and a tactile kudos feedback system, keeping gamers thoroughly entertained across two Xbox launches and beyond. But after four games and a new relationship with publisher Activision, developer Bizarre Creations felt it was time to try something different. The result? Blur, a combat driven racer where cars use energy blasts and lay mines to get ahead of the competition.

Gone are the real-life locations constructed from heavy research and thousands of photographs, and supercars that strictly adhere to racing lines to win. Here up to 20 vehicles thrash across inspired inner city districts and off-road locales, avoiding incoming fire and roadside mines, and storing power-ups to use at the exact right moment. The darker aesthetic makes these warped and unusual ideas seem almost natural, and the continued use of authentic cars and liberal utilisation of real life locations add to the intrigue of this vastly different project. But will it just turn out to be a mature version of Mario Kart?

"Obviously we have power-ups in the game, but we still have a very deep, simulation style driving model underneath," explains Ben Ward, community manager at Bizarre Creations. "What we’ve done is taken that same level of driving and just made it more accessible with cars that are easier to drive. While all of that simulation stuff is there we have power-ups which take skill to use and need mastering in-game in order to get the most out of them," he says. "It’s not just press one button and the blue shell flies over and destroys everyone. It’s a different approach, basically."

The team didn’t insert power-ups without careful consideration; weeks of focus testing and different implementation of the weapons came before the ones we see now. Progressing from selecting items before the race to subtle engine tweaks that would boost your performance during the race, they finally arrived at on-track collectables you can store to use at any time.

"Originally back in the olden days of Blur, [power-ups] were equipped before you entered the race, such as wanting to take in a shotgun and nitro, but if you took in the wrong power-ups you’d be essentially screwed, right?," he explains. "So we moved them on-track... Originally it was a small tweak to the car, but when people didn’t notice them it because a big speed bursts with big visual effects so you can tell you are using a Nitro," he says.

So far only a handful of power-ups have been shown, including energy blasts that smash neighbouring cars into one another or even into other routes, mines that will stop cars leaching onto your slip stream, and a Nitro speed boost. It’s possible to store multiple power-ups and deploy them at the right time, tying into that learning curve Ward referred to earlier. "We may end up shipping with more power-ups, or have even less. We’re still even deciding that. Ideally you want a power-up for every single situation," he says.

Courses will be based on their real-life counterparts, but not to the strenuous detail of the team’s earlier projects. Instead they take inspiration from real locations, giving them the liberty to miss a corner or combine areas of the city to make courses more suited for playing, instead of being stuck with the real thing only functional for a daily commute. The game will begin in Los Angeles, complete with a vast LA Basin with dynamic changes in water level, later arriving at San Francisco, Hackney (London) and even to some deserts and mountains all over the world.

The way the single player will play out will be different to the arcade or seasonal structure of PGR. Although the kudos system is gone, its spiritual successor comes through track-side 'fans', which donate money when you make a cool jump or take out a rival, which can then be put towards buying upgrades. The medal system is stripped away also, where each objective completed gives you a new car, upgrade or will progress you through the story. "Basically, lots of more different and subtle ways of patting you on the back," says Ward.

The story will weave the globe-trotting progression into an ongoing narrative, with characters that will join or rival you and react upon those alignments during a race, such as targeting you over others. Side objectives will ask you to beat a certain character in a race, and although the story progression will be linear, there will be choices and your playing style will see you experiencing different content to other players. "If you smash all over the place then characters who use that play style will invite you to join a ‘group’ where you can do that over and over, and same goes with hot lap times,” he says. "We’re using loads of methods to get this characterisation and deliver the story through the gameplay."

These 'groups' tie into the game’s own social networking tool called 'Blurb', with a group being a series of events or races that have specific rules. Not only will characters contact you through this system in the story, but it creates a dynamic and ever-changing set of games online. Players can create groups with their own specific rules and post them online to share, which can then also be accessed through the web, allowing comments, ratings and suggestions to make the group better, giving the game longer legs and variety over time. "All the searching and tagging tools will mean that all the best stuff will naturally bubble to the top, so we won’t need someone to stand there and say 'This is a good game'. It should just automatically come through and become fresh over several months," explains Ward.

While Blur doesn’t seem like a natural follow-up to their usual style of realistic racing, the elements of arcade gameplay and online ingenuity still remain, and the team at Bizarre Creations are masters of that art. It’s refreshing to see a developer dare to go against the grain with such an established and static genre, and the deep use of weapons and story progression make it look like more than just a high definition Mario Kart clone.

Blur wouldn’t seem to be a natural follow-up to the popular Project Gotham Racing series, but the developers have broken away from the traditional racing style and created something genuinely fresh and exciting, something that will be set apart from the usual breed of racing simulations that we’ve played over the years. How the social networking aspects are handled will be of vital importance, but the user-generated content angle seems very promising indeed. Bizarre Creations are at last living up to their name, but at least it looks like they know what they’re doing.